Kaiser: Part 1
Posted by Oliver | Filed under Kaiser
The professor dropped three grimy notebooks, a photograph, and the first volume of Historia rerum Anglicarum into a cardboard box, then took them out again. He sat back in his chair and turned the items over in his hands, looking up now and again to make sure the department secretary wasn’t coming to chide him again.
“I’m beginning to think you’ve got a morbid fear of going on holiday, Toby, the way you’re dragging your feet,” she’d said when she brought the box, literally wagging a finger. A pouty smile softened the gesture.
Tobias chuckled, “Don’t be silly, Beth, I enjoy a break as much as anyone else.”
“God knows you need it,” she sighed, leaning across the desk and plucking a pen from Tobias’ shirt pocket. “Probably more than anyone else. Half the faculty’s already gone, you know—and the ones still here are only pretending to be working.” She wrote on the box and turned it toward the professor.
Take me home, please, requested the box. He looked sheepishly at the message, whose feminine script implied another pouty smile.
The box had been quietly asking to go home for four hours before the professor noticed it again and felt sorry for it. He fed the box some important papers, which made him feel better, but did little for the box, and the afternoon sun was streaming into the little office before he made a concerted effort to pack up.
The notebooks, photograph, and book were the last things to go in the box. Tobias had pulled them from their protected spot at the bottom of his desk drawer, but as he placed them on top of the other items in the box, he had been overcome with the need to look at them. Now, leaning back in his chair, the professor considered the items one at a time. Bands of orange light filtered through the blinds and cast a pattern which blended Tobais’ hands with the old book. He did not open the tome—he already knew the important parts by heart, though at times he wished he didn’t. It was a collection of stories, a “History of English Affairs” from 1066 to 1198 A.D.— a relic of what should have been a past long dead. It was just a symbol now, proof of an inescapable reality.
With a kind of dull regret he thumbed through the used notebooks. These notebooks chronicled a naive search which lead to those abominable truths that now defined the professor’s existence. The ironic condition: Man seeks wisdom because he loathes his ignorance, but it’s to that ignorance he owes his drive to learn. If Man knew what he was getting into, he never would have started, but now that he has, it’s impossible to go back. Tobias had long since made his peace with Original Sin, and like others before him, he reasoned that Man can either keep striving, and hope that eventually the wisdom pays off, or he can die. The third option, he thought, touching the photograph, is no option at all.
Tobias dropped the items in the box, put on his coat, and strode down the hallway. Beth looked up and wished the professor a good summer as he walked by the department office. Tobias smiled and turned down the stairs, clutching the heavy box close to his chest.
Lizzy, in the photograph, smiled too.
November 7th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Very cool. I’m deffinately curious now ^_^ This site is offcially on my list of sites to check. <3
November 8th, 2008 at 12:00 am
alright, our first fan =]
November 17th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
lol. I was a fan before I even knew about the site <3